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According to preliminary IHS Markit smartphone data, global smartphone shipments recorded a negative year-over-year growth rate for two consecutive quarters in 2018. Shipments totaled 354.8 million units in the third quarter of 2018, declining by 3.3 percent from the previous year.

After launching the P20-series earlier in the year, Huawei is looking towards the latest edition of its Mate series to continue the company’s momentum to retain a spot in the global Top 3 smartphone OEMs.
Huawei presented a host of devices for the premium smartphone segment as well as a gaming focused handset which is becoming more popular in their domestic Chinese market. Huawei also renewed its partnership with Porsche Design. Additionally, the company launched two new wearables, the Watch GT and Band 3 Pro.

Global smartphone shipments reached 344.6 million units in the second quarter of 2018 – a 1.8% decline year over year, from 350.9 million units, and down slightly from the previous quarter. Huawei beat Apple to reach the #2 spot in global shipments. While Samsung retains the top spot, the company recorded its worst quarterly performance since Q2’13.

MWC Shanghai is the Asian event of MWC Barcelona. It is a much smaller event than Barcelona with most participants from China. This year, IHS Markit found the scale had reduced with only five smartphone OEMs exhibiting.

Total year-over-year global smartphone shipments increased 2 percent, reaching 345.5 million units in the first quarter of 2018. However, seasonality took its toll, driving shipment volume down by 11 percent quarter over quarter.

The US Department of Commerce has activated a Denial Order against ZTE Corporation.
The order, in its current form, states that ZTE may not be involved in any transaction involving any commodity, software or technology exported or to be exported from the United States that is subject to Export Administration Regulations (EAR).
The Denial Order expires on March 13th, 2025.
ZTE relies heavily on technology and software from US vendors like Qualcomm and Google.

Based on preliminary data from IHS Markit, global smartphone unit shipments declined by 4.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017 to 387.5 million units. Shipments grew 3.1 percent year over year, from 1.40 billion units to 1.44 billion units. Of the leading handset brands, only Xiaomi and Motorola experienced shipment growth in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Marking ten years since the launch of its first Kindle e-reader, Amazon recently introduced the All-New Kindle Oasis, the second generation of the brand’s Oasis e-reader series. The All-New Kindle Oasis, also known as Oasis 2 has received several significant improvements from its predecessor, the Kindle Oasis (April 2016 model).

MWC Shanghai is an Asia version of Mobile World Congress. The scale is much smaller than the event held in Barcelona earlier this year and most of participants are from China. This year, we found that the scale got bigger and more smartphone OEMs joined the event compare to the previous year.

The S8 and S8+ are visibly differentiated smartphones because of their large Samsung displays, tiny bezels, and fast chipsets which all play to Samsung group’s competitive strengths. Samsung’s initial Bixby AI implementation falls short of its goal of being a comprehensive AI assistant because of weak app integration and limited voice compatibility. Provided Samsung can manufacture sufficient volumes of S8 and S8 + smartphones, and has no new reliability issues, the S8 will be a success for Samsung. The strong industrial design will support the Samsung brand and provide a foundation for Samsung’s ecosystem ambitions with VR, Bixby AI, and enterprise offerings.

Mobile World Congress 2017 was again the event for companies like LG and Sony to show off their flagship devices. This year, however, MWC was as interesting for what was not launched, as for what was unveiled. Key OEMs chose not to launch flagship smartphone models because of chipset availability. Another hightlight of this year's 2017 is the re-launch of the BlackBerry and Nokia brands.

On September 16th, 2016, MediaTek announced their first LTE smartphone win for the Sprint network in the US with the LG X Power model LS755. This design win on a major US carrier is significant in that it represents...

Samsung’s latest Note device, the Galaxy Note 7, is the company’s new flagship device. With it, Samsung hopes to capitalize on the momentum gained earlier in the year with the launch of the Galaxy S 7/edge devices. Pricing will depend on the carrier and availability will begin from August 19th.